Samsung reportedly investing $40 million in Niantic for exclusive games

Samsung is going after the mobile gamers with the latest rumored collaboration with Pokémon Go creator Niantic.

A source told the Inquirer that Samsung is investing $40 million in Niantic for exclusive games to be preloaded on its Galaxy phones. The main focus of the deal will be an exclusive Harry Potter game which will make use of the S Pen stylus as a makeshift magic wand.

It is unclear at the moment if this is going to be a variant of the recently announced game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite title or a specially designed game for the Galaxy phones. The deal, which could be announced within the next few weeks, is said to include the location-based game, Ingress. However, Pokémon Go is not going to be part of the deal as Niantic is "super protective of that franchise".

The purported collaboration is a win-win situation for both companies; Niantic needs to raise money to support an IPO in 2019 and Samsung is "looking to differentiate itself from its smartphone competitors".

"After a lot of haggling, and pushing, Niantic refused to make the features without a large investment from Samsung, and the number they arrived at was $40m", the source tells us.

Samsung recently partnered with Epic Games to pre-install Fortnite on the Galaxy Note9. We won't be surprised to see the first wave of exclusive games being revealed alongside the Galaxy S10 next year.